Non-mobile Websites on the iPhone

If you’re reading this, you probably already understand why one might wish to view a regular, non-mobile website on the iPhone. For example, eBay now forcefully redirects iPhone traffic to a limited functionality mobile site (http://mobileweb.ebay.com). Among other things, relisting auctions from the mobileweb.ebay site is impossible. Blasphemy!

The Workaround

Servers perform these frustrating redirects by reading the browser’s “user-agent” ID. So, if we spoof the iPhone browser’s user-agent ID, web servers will believe the iPhone is a regular desktop browser. But, the iPhone’s Safari browser doesn’t support user-agent spoofing. This leaves us with two choices:

5 Replies to “Non-mobile Websites on the iPhone”

Why the mainstream browsers like Opera mini and Safari Mobile can’t do this I don’t know!
With more and more crap mobile versions of sites that are limited in functionally and sometimes barely work at all (my office webmail included – alt-n worldclient), “faking” the browser’s user agent is the only way to use the websites properly!

Some sites offer a link to the non-mobile version at the bottom of the page, which helps, but the control needs to be with the browser. Ideally a CSS media variant for mobile so the browser can switch modes client-side without having to cock about with the HTTP headers sent to the web server.

The bottom line is:
Web developers: please stop *forcing* users onto a mobile only version of your site!